The Spit Plate
by Green Eve
Summary: Lit. She was his forever girl, and she couldn’t even see him.


_**Disclaimer**_: This story is only fan fiction, and not a Machiavellian attempt to steal the copyright of the Gilmore Girls.

_A/N: With thanks to **Angeleyez**, who listened to me tell this story about five minutes after I thought of it, and who read many drafts of early scenes. And thanks to **rubykate**, for her support and encouragement, but especially for the beta, a very big job._

_>  
_

**The Spit Plate  
**

As a youth, Gordon Carver lived in decadent, turn of the century New York. He ran with a wild crowd. When the Nesbit scandal broke out, his family packed him off to Europe. There Carver met a beautiful girl from Norrköping, Sweden. He married in haste, thinking the girl was pregnant.

Surprisingly, Carver's parents weren't angry that he had married so quickly and without their permission. They were well pleased with the girl. She was reasonably refined, and because she was foreign, it was easy to pass her off to society as "quite possibly titled." Best of all, the girl rarely spoke. Her English was very poor.

Gordon Carver's parents made the proper announcements, and held a lavish reception. Rory had done an archival search and uncovered an account of the evening written by a society reporter. It was a quaint story, composed so long ago that to read it was like happening upon a message in a bottle washed up on the shore. The society reporter—Rory imagined her as a homely girl with glasses and an overlarge hat—had written in the first person, as was customary in those days. Rory had been tickled by the breathless, transparently fawning piece; it itemized every detail from the ice sculptures to the bows on the satin slippers of the foreign and "quite possibly titled" bride.

A century later, it was Rory Gilmore who was the budding journalist, so when she received the invitation-summons from her grandparents to attend the family retreat her grandfather's company was hosting, it was second nature for her to make illicit use of the research resources at the Yale Daily News to check out the site of the event.

"It's at a mansion-y type place called The Copenhagen," she explained to Marty, as she packed in her dorm room for the weekend away. There was a suitcase open on her bed, and Marty was stretched out alongside it, his arms folded across his chest like an Egyptian mummy. There wasn't enough room on the bed for both Marty and all the clothes on the typewritten list Rory's grandmother had given her, but Rory didn't like to tell Marty to move. Marty could be a little sensitive.

"The Copenhagen is a splendid example of American Federal architecture in a picturesque setting, framed by maple trees and beautifully recreated gardens_," _Rory quoted, from the official Web site."The home has been photographed for many publications, and is included in Wallace Nutting's, _Connecticut Beautiful_."

"I've been meaning to read that," Marty said sarcastically.

It was in her research of The Copenhagen that Rory discovered the Carver family, who, unlike the Thaws and Nesbits and Stanford Whites of the world, were largely lost to history. Rory knew, for example, that Gordon Carver had been clever about some things. Like Thomas Edison, he had bought up the patents to other people's inventions, and while he differed from Edison in being incapable of improving upon these innovations, he had the resources to mass produce and market them, making himself a great deal of money. But he had always been bad at geography. He acquired an enormous mansion for his Swedish bride and in her honor renamed it "The Copenhagen." Gordon Carver had a tendency to confuse Denmark with Sweden.

"And they say the place is supposed to be _haunted_," Rory told her friend.

"Haunted!" Marty exclaimed, with mock concern.

"They have their own page on American Ghosts dot com. And there've been two TV shows about it. That British psychic guy … you know, the one with the earring? He prowled around, checking for cold spots."

"I hate that guy," Marty said.

"A servant … a boy, I think, fell down the back stairs and broke his neck. No one knows why he was there at that moment, or what happened." Rory paused in her packing, considering. "I guess maybe he could have been sneaking around, having an affair with one of the girls-" She pursed her lips, thinking. "Huh. Well, anyway. They say he only appears to girls." She corrected herself, "Young _women_, I mean. And after that, something bad always happens to them."

"What if he appears to you? You could die, Rory!"

"I suppose," Rory laughed. "If horror movie rules apply to real life."

Marty rolled over and looked at Rory with interest. She had just confirmed something that he'd been wondering about for some time. "Well … I don't think you should go," he said casually. "I think you should stay here and have a quadruple Alien feature with me."

Rory smiled to herself, tucking a cardigan under her chin so she could fold in the sleeves. "I'm afraid I'm just not missing Joss Whedon enough to sit through _Alien IV_ again."

"I am," Marty groaned, put out by the lack of Joss Whedon fare on television. "But why do _you_ have to go?"

"The grandparents order and I obey. Close your eyes, please." Rory wanted to assemble her underwear. She waited until she was sure Marty's eyes were closed. Quickly, she transferred her underthings from the top dresser drawer to her suitcase. "It's a family retreat," she said. "And I'm the family component."

"Why can't your mother be the family component?" Marty asked.

"My mother is not invited," said Rory, and she looked away.

"Am I allowed to look now?"

"What? Oh. Yeah."

"How long did you say this thing was?" Marty asked, watching as Rory checked items against her list. At the bottom her grandmother had handwritten: _There will be dancing_. It was underlined twice.

"Just the weekend," Rory replied.

"You know-" Marty sat up on his elbow. "My father's company has a family thing every year. A _picnic_. There's a cookout, and potato sack races. Everyone is assigned their own ice cream cake."

Rory looked up with interest. "Their very own cake?"

"Every _family_," Marty amended. "You send a representative to collect your cake, and they cross off your name. One year my brother took two, and the Ziskowski family had to do without."

"Oh, the poor Ziskowski's!" Rory was sympathetic. In her opinion, missing out on cake was a great hardship. "That's why I like being a "G."

The cocktail-length gown Rory intended to wear to the dance Saturday night was on a wooden hanger dangling from her bedroom door. She took the dress down and held it in front of herself, looking in the mirror. She wondered if she could get away with stuffing it in the garment sleeve in her suitcase, or if she needed to take a garment bag too.

"One could say you lead a charmed existence." Marty's tone was morose. His own existence was beset with pitfalls, and not in the least charmed.

"I somehow doubt any event involving my grandmother will ever include an ice cream cake." Rory eyed her suitcase. She found the notion of _more_ luggage exhausting, but she didn't have a steamer, and she was sharing a suite with her grandparents. If she messed around with the hot water, and fogged up the mirrors, her grandmother would have a cow. Holding up the hanger so the hem of the dress wouldn't brush the floor while she deliberated, Rory said, "Now, if cloistered nuns produced a line of slice and bake marzipan cookies, okay – _that_ I could see on the menu. Maybe. If my grandmother was really roughing it."

Rory thought her new dress was beautiful, but it had been a problematic dress from the start. When she'd tried it on in the store, she hadn't been a hundred percent sure she could make it work. The dress was light and airy, and she loved the way the skirt fell about her legs. The shoulder straps were almost invisible. It had a fitted, empire style bodice, cut at the back in such a way that she knew she wouldn't be able to wear a bra. Rory was not in the habit of going braless. It left her feeling over-exposed.

But the gown was that perfect, elusive shade of green. She finally decided she _did_ want it; it was too pretty to pass up. By then, the saleswoman had already put the dress away. With ill humor, the woman had gone back to the rack, returning with the incorrect size. Rory hadn't noticed until she'd gotten home, and at that point she'd still had an essay to write, and an article for the paper—there hadn't been enough time to return and make an exchange.

At the time, Rory had been suspicious that the saleswoman had given her the wrong size out of spite. She _had_ been rather a long time deciding, and had tried on a great many dresses in the process. Lorelai saved the day by offering to cut the dress down to size. Busy with her own work, Rory watched with one eye, from a distance. It seemed like a major operation. She was lucky that her mother had offered to make the alterations.

"I wish you didn't have to go," Marty grumbled. "It's not fair."

"Marty, I'm sorry," Rory said sincerely. "My grandparents just sort of sprang this on me."

"I know, you told me. It's their M.O."

"It _is_." As had been the case with Europe, Rory's grandmother had told her what to pack as well as how to pack it, and Rory was putting her strappy sandals in shoe covers. She knew her grandmother would check. "My grandparents can't simply say, we're going to this thing and we'd like you to come. It's important to us. They have to be all sneaky about it."

Rory's phone rang. Marty reached for it, obviously intending to be helpful.

"Don't answer!" Rory yelped. It was Huntzberger, and she was trying not to talk to him. Rory knew that Logan thought her a lovesick puppy, so she was experimenting with giving him the cold shoulder. So far it hadn't been going all that well. Whenever she ran into Logan, she was so genuinely happy to see him that she forgot to be cool.

"All right, all right," Marty said with resignation. "Sheesh."

>

They arrived Friday evening as the sun was setting. Black shadow had collected under the trees and was starting to spread across the lawn. Her grandfather pulled into a caravan that was inching up the winding drive.

The Copenhagen was huge. There was a rectangular center structure with a long wing on either side. From the backseat, Rory counted eight chimneys, and then suddenly it was dark; she could no longer see the roof. But the windows were bright, so Rory counted those. The rows of windows were arranged symmetrically around a center entrance, with a semicircular fanlight over the impressive front door.

She saw that there were four floors, and she assumed there must be an attic too. The moment she made that assumption a light on the top floor flicked on, and she saw that there was indeed an attic. She saw a shape moving in the window—a person? Interested, Rory leaned forward, wondering who was up there and what he was doing. Then the window went dark, and Rory was left with nothing to do but go back to counting windows.

"First nights are always so tiresome," her grandmother sighed.

"Most annoying," her grandfather agreed. Normally at this point her grandfather would have directed a comment to the cheap seats, something edifying, a brief discourse on American Federal architecture or the Revolutionary War, and Rory would have done her best to listen attentively. Sometimes at the end of one of her grandfather's lectures there was a little pop quiz. No matter how dry the material, she liked to please him by getting the answers right. But tonight her grandfather simply sounded weary. "Everyone needs to get sorted," he said. "Nothing to do but wait it out."

Rory squirmed under her seatbelt. She was _starving to death_. She knew the first order of business would be to get settled. Then they would have to change. It would be forever before there would even be the possibility of food.

>

The first night passed much as expected, with one unpleasant surprise.

Rory unpacked, discovering as she did that she had forgotten her copy of _Middlesex_ in the car. Her book bag had been heavy with schoolwork, so she had secreted her pleasure reading about her luggage. _Roadside Picnic_ and _The Forgotten Queens of Islam_ were in her suitcase, _Wodwo_ and _Dance of the Happy Shades_ were at the bottom of the garment bag, and she had tucked _Helen in Egypt_ into her makeup kit. But she had carried _Middlesex_ into the car with her, and forgotten it there. She was disappointed, but she supposed she could do without _Middlesex,_ for one night.

She changed into a pleated skirt and short-sleeved sweater, and her grandmother sent her on ahead. Leaving the suite, Rory turned left rather than right, and discovered an odd, curving staircase at the end of the corridor. She had three flights to descend, and she started slowly, a hand on the wall. Her heels clomped on the narrow stairs. Halfway down, she stopped abruptly. She felt chilly and weird, and was overcome with the sensation that there was somebody there with her on the dark, enclosed stairs. The presence itself paused, as if it had been on its way elsewhere, but had suddenly taken notice of her.

"Ghost?" she whispered. "Is that you?"

Her heart had quickened, just a bit. Rory wasn't interested in the supernatural, though she had blankly sat through ghost-y type shows on the specialty channels, just as she had blankly sat through paid advertising, and shows about home decorating. It was TV. That was what one did with TV, turned it on and sat in front of it blankly. From her viewing, she recalled that it was important to be non confrontational. Ghosts didn't take well to confrontation. Neither did she.

She cleared her throat. "I want to assure you that I mean you no harm. No harm whatsoever. Null, nada, nothing. Nishto. Uh, I don't know how to say it in Swedish. Are you Swedish? I am harmless. Of less harm, I could not be. Seriously." Tense, she waited, the wall cool under her fingertips.

"Oh—and I'm just passing through," she added, as an afterthought. There was no response, and Rory made it safely to the bottom.

She started down the main hall, but when she heard the murmur of strange voices she had a failure of fortitude, and was reluctant to proceed. She turned, wanting to go back to the suite and wait for her grandparents.

That was when she discovered she couldn't find the stairs. There had been a door at the foot of the staircase, and she had closed it after her. Now she was faced with a long hallway that was nothing but doors, and she didn't want to open them all, looking for her stairs or worse—go up the wrong stairs and end up in a different wing. Finally the growling in her stomach propelled her forward. She sidled into a fire-lit, dark paneled room, and was handed a napkin and a flute of champagne. A serving tray slid under her nose, and she helped herself to the hors d'oeuvreson offer. It was a white square with a squiggle of red pepper on top, and her eyes narrowed. Rory bit into it, and groaned inwardly. She took her drink out into the hall, and fumbled at her skirt pocket for her cell phone. She dialed one-handed.

"Bad news," she told her mother's voicemail. "Somebody stole Sookie's recipe for savory cheesecake nibbles."

>

Gordon Carver's wife never mastered the language, and "Copenhagen" as it was pronounced in English had a different inflection. It took her a long time to realize the mistake her husband had made and when she did, the name had been in use so long Mrs. Carver was unwilling to embarrass her husband by drawing the matter to his attention. Of course by that time many other people _had_, but Gordon Carver didn't care. He lied and said the name choice had been intentional. And in 1913, when a statue of The Little Mermaid was erected in Copenhagen to commemorate the writings of Hans Christian Andersen, Carver went ahead and commissioned a reproduction. He had it installed in one of his wife's gardens. Instead of staring forlornly out over the sea, this little mermaid stared forlornly out over a sea of flowers. Mrs. Carver had been bewildered by the gesture, but was unable to discuss the matter satisfactorily with her husband. In the end, she grew to like the statue well enough. It provided a decent spot of shade.

Rory's research had revealed little about Mrs. Carver. The woman hadn't been a diarist, and had left behind few letters. But unbeknownst to Rory, she was experiencing an affinity with the woman that stretched lightly across a century, for Rory too had formed an unusual appreciation of The Little Mermaid statue. Behind the statue was an excellent hiding spot, Rory Gilmore was discovering. She was hiding there now, glum as all get out, as she watched handsome Charlie Lawson stoop to whisper in the ear of a giggling girl.

Charlie Lawson was tall. He had hair the color of midnight in winter, and blue-green eyes that were so pale they were almost eerie. He was a tad on the beefy side, but he wore it well; in fact, Rory found him impossibly good looking. She had been introduced to him over breakfast. He gave her an appraising once over, smiling with even white teeth, and asked her to walk with him in the gardens.

Rory surprised herself by agreeing to go. It was a chance to get away from the house. It took a small army to run a house the size of The Copenhagen—every time she turned around, Rory ran into another member of the staff, indistinguishable from one another in their uniforms—and she was sure they had all heard about the spectacular embarrassment she had suffered that morning in the kitchens. It had been an embarrassment entirely of her own making, and she was equally certain that they were all snickering about it behind their hands. If such an incident had occurred at The Dragonfly, she and her mother would have mocked the guest mercilessly. It went without saying Michel would have mocked the guest as well. Michel was French. He mocked everybody.

Surrounded by tulips and daffodils, Rory leaned against the Little Mermaid, wincing to recall how she had arisen early, simmering with righteous indignation. After several wrong turns, some retracing of her steps, and the horror of catching constipated Digory Margrave pacing the gallery in his pajamas (Mr. Margrave was a colleague of her grandpa's, and he was ninety if he was a day; he commended Rory on what he assumed was her morning constitutional, assuring her that a little exercise got the gears working), Rory made her way below stairs.

Desperate need of coffee had been her cover story. Solving the mystery of the purloined recipe for savory cheesecake nibbles had been her mission. She owed it to her mother, and to Sookie—they had worked so hard to set up The Dragonfly Inn. The Dragonfly had many attractions, but Sookie's cooking was an enormous draw. How galling that some other establishment should steal one of her recipes! Rory felt honor bound to shine the bright light of truth on this festering malfeasance.

Rory had eased open a heavy door into a room that fell silent at her passing. The staff was busy at long tables sorting out roses—they had just taken a flower delivery. This was a scene that was familiar to Rory, but on a much smaller scale. The Dragonfly bought their flowers wholesale too, and the staff arranged them. It was a cost-cutting measure.

At the time, Rory wanted to stop and plunge her hands in those beautiful flowers, as the other girls were. She would have suggested unorthodox arrangements, and put rose petals in her hair. Instead, she pressed on to the bustling kitchens. At a stainless steel island, she interrupted the staff to request an audience with the head chef. He was too important to cover the breakfast shift, so instead she spoke to one of his subordinates. The conversation quickly took a glacial turn. Increasingly agitated, Rory couldn't help making the accusation of recipe theft. Yet another busy room fell silent, listening, and Rory saw herself through their eyes—a pampered guest, making a fuss. She was informed that the savory cheesecake hors d'oeuvres had been on the menu at The Copenhagen since 1997, and if anyone had stolen the recipe, it was The Dragonfly's head chef, Sookie St. James.

Rory was so flustered that she actually _smashed into someone_ on her way out the door. It was a hard hit that left her red-faced and breathless, and she stared at her toes while she stammered an apology. She was much too embarrassed to look him in the eye. Her fingers were itching to take up her cell phone. If only she'd spoken directly to her mother the evening before! She already knew she was going to be playing the kid card—passing the baton to her mother for diplomatic reparations. She fled down the corridor and presented herself in the yellow room in time to have breakfast with the grandparents. She wondered if perhaps her journalistic future would be best confined to storm watches on local weather forecasts.

After that, the day got worse, but first it tricked her by pretending that it was going to get better. She did get to spend a pleasant hour walking the gardens in Charlie Lawson's company. For some reason Charlie knew the names of flowers, and had been able to point out the cyclamens and geranium, and closer to the trees, sprays of Star-of-Bethlehem. He had broken off a sprig of English Bluebells and presented it to her, a gesture Rory found terribly sweet. She tucked the blossom behind her ear, causing Charlie to comment on her eyes. Charlie was amusing, and Rory would have hung with him longer, had her grandmother not interrupted them, catching Rory's wrist in a vice-like grip. "I want to introduce you to somebody. His mother is on the board at Forest Hill."

"Forest Hill?" Rory repeated, wrinkling her nose in befuddlement.

"Forest Hill _Cemetery_," her grandmother clarified, with impatience. "In Boston."

"Cemeteries have boards?" Rory frequently found herself at odds—albeit quietly—with her grandmother's perspective. She was unclear as to how a guy's mom being on a cemetery board was an endorsement for his good character.

"He's a lovely young man."

"Uh, grandma?" Rory said awkwardly. "This is Charlie-"

Her grandmother regarded Charlie Lawson with a supercilious air. Supercilious airs were her grandmother's specialty, and this one plainly said: _You can do better._

"We were just talking," Rory protested, but she allowed her grandmother to drag her away. What else could she do? It was useless to explain to her grandmother that skirmishes for social standing among bluebloods weren't important to a girl who had grown up in a messy little house that was once almost demolished by termites.

"And get that thing out of your hair," her grandmother snapped. "You look like Esther Williams."

Rory looked over her shoulder apologetically, and to her dismay saw that Charlie hadn't exactly been impervious to the subtext. Some time later, when Rory had managed to extricate herself from the match of her grandmother's choosing (the loathsome Thom Doty), she sought out Charlie again, and attempted to apologize. Charlie informed her that it didn't matter, and anyway, he had a girlfriend. She just hadn't come with him this weekend, but she did exist and was waiting for him back home.

Rory couldn't fault him for the lie. His feelings had been hurt. And now she was huddled behind a mermaid, jealously watching him walk with another girl. Evidently girls were a dime a dozen at The Copenhagen.

She could add Charlie Lawson to the list of people she was going to have to avoid. It was a list that was getting increasingly lengthy; at the moment it included the entire staff of The Copenhagen, and Thom Doty, who had put his hand on Rory's ass the moment her grandmother's back was turned.

It was going to be a very long weekend.

>

Dinner was a formal affair under the stars. Her grandfather wore a tuxedo. Rory had helped him with his bow tie. The floral arrangements Rory had observed in the making were a great success. There were crisp linen tablecloths, and a great deal of silverware and crystal. Sometimes, Rory helped clear at The Dragonfly. She was grateful she didn't have to bus tables tonight.

There was a jazzy orchestra playing standards from the 1920's. "It's like something from Fitzgerald," her grandmother said. "They've outdone themselves."

"Rory!" Her grandfather took her elbow. "They're playing Beiderbecke. This piece is called 'Copenhagen.'"

"How apropos," Rory murmured. It occurred to her that if her roommate Paris Gellar had been present, Paris wouldn't have hesitated to point out the paradoxical nature of the moment. The Copenhagen had been constructed in the late 1700's, renamed in the 1900s to honor a woman who was from _Sweden_, and now a song from the 1920's was being used to evoke a name that had been a boo-boo in the first place. _It's a Federal setting. Why not a Federal theme? _Rory imagined Paris saying this. _You should be wearing hoop skirts and wrapping bandages._ _And what's up with the tunes?_ _Why don't they play 'Johnny's Gone for a Soldier,' or 'Yankee Doodle?'_

_But this has got a good beat and you can dance to it_, Rory replied. Even imaginary Paris was easy to antagonize.

"You'll have to take a turn on the dance floor with Thom Doty," her grandmother decided for her. "That boy can trace his lineage back to the Mayflower."

"I know," Rory said. Thom Doty had managed to work that piece of trivia, as well as his family's net worth into their brief conversation. Rory had googled his family name, out of boredom, on one of the computers that were available to guests in the green library.

That afternoon, Rory had stayed at the Little Mermaid for as long as she could, but there had been noises coming from the woods. Rory didn't do wilderness, and she was nervous about creatures. Anything could have been out there—enormous spiders, werewolves, raccoons. She had deemed it necessary to vacate her refuge. With alacrity. The green library was her subsequent hiding place.

Safe in the library, she had eyed the bookshelves with interest. There was no reason to continue her investigation into The Copenhagen—it was unlikely she could get a paper out of it, or interest her editor in a story—but there hadn't been anything better to do, and at the very least it was an exercise in research. Rory had examined the shelves, taking down the odd volume for a closer look. She kept having to resist the urge to wipe her hands on her skirt, and had wished she could change into jeans and a T-shirt and really pull the place apart.

Sadly, the collection had proved unimpressive, and after a while she decided that an interior decorator had probably assembled it from lots of books purchased at estate sales. She did find some old ledgers that appeared to be house accounts with the occasional descriptive flourish _(Ghastly_ _rain. Will it ever cease? Rev. Abbot, Mr. Thompson, Mrs. Thompson, Miss Thompson, Miss Gertrude and Anna to visit. Promises to be rather a dull gathering.) _The books were water-damaged and difficult to read. She had carried one to the window, flipping through the pages. _Mrs. Carver is sick with longing for _(Rory hadn't been able to make out the next couple of words) _I have decided that she would benefit_-

Rory had turned the page, wondering what Mrs. Carver would benefit from, but there was no more. The writer—she assumed the journal belonged to Gordon Carver—had run out of space. She went back to the shelf, hoping the sentence would be continued in another volume, but when she compared the dates she realized that the next journal in sequence was missing.

Stymied, with time on her hands to kill, she'd needed a new research project. She turned to the computer. _Mayflower Passenger Manifest_, she'd thought. With ease Rory established that there had indeed been somebody by the name of Doty on The Mayflower. A servant. Evidently Thom Doty's family had upgraded their pedigree.

At the party, Rory took her seat. She was beside Thom Doty, and quite distant from Charlie Lawson. Looking down the table, she met Charlie's eyes by accident, but he quickly looked away. Across the table was old Mr. Margrave, who saved her from having to speak to Thom by immediately launching into the story of how he had saved Mikhail Baryshnikov from the KGB in 1974. Baryshnikov had been touring North America with the Bolshoi, and one night after a spectacular performance he made a dash for freedom. Apparently Mr. Margrave had been driving the getaway car.

Mr. Margrave took a sip of red wine. "I said to myself, why—that's _Baryshnikov_. Walking down the middle of Fifth Avenue. The poor fellow kept looking over his shoulder."

Rory smiled at the elderly man. Baryshnikov had defected in Toronto, not Manhattan. "And so you rescued him," she said kindly. She knew the anecdote was borrowed, but Mr. Margrave told it with aplomb. Rory was utterly charmed. She didn't even lift her head to acknowledge the server hovering at her shoulder, and within moments forgot his presence. A short while later, she noticed that her water glass had been refilled and was surprised. "When did that happen?" she wondered aloud.

"When did what happen?" asked Thom Doty.

Feeling uncomfortable, Rory plucked at her shoulder straps. She was aware that he had been watching her out of the corner of his eye. "Nothing," she replied.

"That's some dress," he said.

Rory rolled her eyes. "Thanks."

Thom stood, offering his hand. "Will you honor me?"

She checked another eye roll. Logan Huntzberger might have asked her something similar, but he would have done it ironically. Rory didn't credit Thom with enough wit to be ironic. She intercepted a sharp glance from her grandmother, and had no choice but to acquiesce. Rory allowed Thom Doty to pull her out onto the dance floor.

>

Rory was _not_ a dancer, but she was finding that the heels helped. She stayed on her toes, thinking of England, and let Thom steer with a hand on the small of her back. Thom wasn't flashy. His main move was a dull clockwise turn. The two of them executed it over and over. Across the dance floor Charlie Lawson and his partner danced rakishly into a table, scattering roses and giggling like fools. Rory looked at them with longing. It wasn't that she was so enamored of Charlie. She didn't want to _marry_ him, if that's what her grandmother had been worried about. He was just so much more fun.

Now there were flowers all over the dance floor. The other dancers were stepping on them, kicking them, crushing them underfoot. _More precious than a wet rose single on a stem,_ she thought. _You are caught in the drift_. She felt trapped, stuck in a clinch with wretched Thom Doty. There was nothing she could do but wait out the dance, the party, the evening.

Rory didn't try to make conversation with Thom—as far as she was concerned, they had nothing to talk about. She kept her face turned away, getting a glimpse here of the orchestra, a glimpse there of the dinner tables, a glimpse of the other dancers, and a glimpse of someone who could have been her former boyfriend Jess Mariano. He was in black trousers and a white dress shirt, glowering at the edge of the dance floor.

Rory's eyes widened. Thom turned her again. She lost sight of Jess. If it _was_ Jess. "Wait!" Thom was still turning, and she couldn't see past his shoulder. "Wait, Thom! Did you see-?"

"I didn't see anything."

It couldn't possibly have been Jess. What would _he_ be doing at The Copenhagen? Jess Mariano wouldn't last five minutes at a stuffy place like The Copenhagen—he'd go insane. It had been a trick of the light, that's all. After he'd left her, she had seen him everywhere—it was like he had been haunting her. She would think that she saw him on a corner as she drove past, or just ahead of her on the street and turning into an alley. Her heart would vibrate in her chest, but always she was mistaken. Nevertheless, Rory tried to pull away. Thom wouldn't let her. That was the moment she realized the reason he was holding her so close was that he had an erection. "God!" she groaned, straining. "What are you? _Thirteen_?"

"It happens." He said this with more equanimity than Rory would have anticipated from a guy in his situation.

"Let me go!"

"No."

She was locked in his arms. He continued to turn. Rory followed. What the hell else was she supposed to do? The grandparents passed on the dance floor, light in each other's arms, and her grandmother smiled and nodded encouragingly. Thom turned her again, and she had another chance to look at that spot. Jess wasn't there. Rory frowned. "I thought I saw …"

"Maybe you saw the legendary ghost. I heard he only appears to _virgins_."

Rory stared up at him, incredulous. "Is that supposed to insult me?" She made another attempt to pull away.

"Stop struggling." His voice was husky. "It makes it _worse_."

"That's _your_ problem."

"I just want you to know you're a cock-tease," he growled in her ear.

"_You're_ a pig." She drove her heel into his instep.

"Bitch," he hissed.

"Oh," she said sweetly. "Did I step on your foot? I feel _terrible_." Furious, she slipped out of his arms and off the dance floor, leaving Thom Doty to deal with his tented pants all on his own. She had no other thought on her mind but escape. She was done, she decided. She'd run up to the suite and get her grandfather's keys, so she could fetch her copy of _Middlesex_ from the car. She had five other books, but _Middlesex_ was the one she wanted at that moment. It would just take a second to grab it; she knew exactly where it was. Then she'd go back to her room and spend the rest of the night reading. She wouldn't change until her grandparents retired, so they would see that she was still in her party dress. That way she could pretend she'd never left the dance. When they asked, as they were sure to, she would say she'd had a lovely time.

>

He could have gotten away with being late. He could have gotten away with being insubordinate. But the late-insubordinate combo was too big a hit for his performance record to absorb. "Mr. Mariano, you are your own worst enemy," the dispatcher said. Right before she fired him. And Jess, still sort of brainwashed by his embarrassing foray into the self-help movement, had actually _agreed_ with her, like a good disciple of pop-psychology.

So there he'd been, abruptly liberated but not at all free, blinking on the sidewalk in the harsh light of noon, and not quick enough to sidestep the sick sense of panic crawling up his spine. He had nothing to his name but half a paycheck, some loose change, and a pack or two of Ramen noodles. But what he did have was up-to-date certification as a forklift operator, so when he saw the job posting he took a chance and drove out to The Copenhagen. On the application he wrote: _Experience with pushback racks, gravity flow racks, pick module and regular racks as well as stacking full pallets in a freestanding area. No wrecks on forklift. Ever. I respect OSHA rules and regulations. I am eager to learn new skills._

They seemed happy to see him, but maybe that was just because he was the only guy who'd shown up. While they tracked down the supervisor, Jess sat on a stool in the corner of the kitchen, trying to overlook the growling of his stomach and seem harmless. A man with graying hair and thick glasses arrived, introduced himself as Andy Moizer, and shook Jess's hand. He took Jess under the mansion. Jess hadn't known what to expect, and had been amazed by the cavernous basement. It was a cobwebby series of rooms, graduated in size, opening one after another like Chinese Boxes set in a row. It was a little dark, with brick walls that were evocative of a wine cellar, or a dungeon, but the aisles were wide and there was plenty of crap stored down there. It really was a warehouse.

Andy gave him the lift operator skills evaluation test right away.

Did the operator pull forward toward the designated section of racks without striking anything?

Pass Fail

Did the operator place the forks under the pallet properly?

Pass Fail

Was the load raised or tilted properly?

Pass Fail

And so on. Jess scored 30 out of 30. It wasn't rocket science. "So, mostly, you'll be on grounds," Andy explained. He took off his glasses to clean them on his shirt. "God … the lawn. That's a piece of work. Weeds, leaves, it all has to be pristine. Gotta pick up every branch that falls off."

_Great_, Jess thought.

"Hell, you'll do whatever needs doing. Big place like this—that's a lot, you know?"

Jess nodded. Andy continued, "But sometimes you'll come down here and pull stuff …" Andy's heavy footsteps echoed as he led Jess along a row of crates and pallets and irregular objects that were draped with drop cloths and rendered spooky by concealment. "Like … this here is the stage. For when we have music. We bring it up and assemble it. Which _you'll_ do. And here are the exterior tables … for big dinner parties." He shrugged. "It depends on the character of the event, what we'll need."

"Okay." In one word, Jess tried to sound agreeable and ready to work, all the while wondering what or whom the man had been quoting when he used the expression, 'character of the event.'

Andy led him into an office and Jess eyed the mess. He could already tell Andy was going to be a breeze to work for, and he thought he might be experiencing a sensation with which he wasn't on close terms. Could it be hope? The older man slid into the chair behind his desk. "There's some paperwork, and-"

Andy looked up, pointing, and Jess turned to see. On the wall behind him, there was a dry erase board. At the top it said 'Number of Days without an Accident.' It was smeared as if someone had erased the board with the swipe of a hand, but Jess could still make out a faint seventy-five. The present tally was three. "Don't fuck up," Andy told him.

"Got it," Jess said.

>

Initially, the Carvers were happy. Once again there was a possibility of a baby, but on a dark night that possibility passed before a doctor could be summoned. After that, Mrs. Carver was lethargic. She stayed in bed and the fine lines of her features grew soft. Mr. Carver wandered the estate aimlessly. He happened upon an ad in the Saturday Evening Post for a pop-up toaster, and began to develop an interest in technology. To pursue this interest, he would have to travel. He intended to leave his wife behind. It did not seem to him that she required his presence.

Mr. Carver began to meet with inventors. Many of them were poor, and it was easy to convince them to sell the patents to their creations. He acquired some devices that were promising, including a spring steel carpet beater with a slip-resistant handgrip, and it was this he was carrying the evening he returned to his home and made the discovery that perhaps he had left his wife alone for too long. In his absence, Mrs. Carver had recuperated. She had taken a lover, a boy named Anton Pawłowski, who was amazed by his good fortune, much as he was amazed when he found himself hurtling down the servants' stairs at the back of the house.

The next morning the staff of The Copenhagen awoke to a death, and an absence. They received instructions from Mr. Carver to make whatever arrangements were necessary with respect to the unfortunate boy. Since Mr. Carver's wife was not present, he no longer required a house to contain her, and he directed the servants to go about closing up The Copenhagen. He sent someone to fetch him a new trunk from the box room—he would need all of his things to be repacked.

Mr. Carver's parents had taught him two things: the best way to deal with a problem was to situate oneself at some distance from it, and that making a falsehood into the truth was as easy as telling it convincingly. In preparation for his departure he went into his study and began an entry in his journal, filling the pages of one volume and picking up where he left off in another. _Mrs. Carver is sick with longing for her native country_, he wrote, pleasing himself with his inventiveness. _I have decided that she would benefit_ …

>

The salary was low, but it included free room and board and the possibility of a pay increase and benefits once he passed probation and his job description became more defined. He had to be flexible, and work independently, which suited him. He cleaned, mostly around the property, and kept a never-ending list of maintenance projects in his back pocket. Some days he drove a truck into town and picked up a big order. He spent long hours stocking. He brought stuff up from storage, and he put it away.

Andy had assigned him an additional task, a long-term project to create a definitive inventory of the contents of the basement. Sweating and stripped to the waist despite the chill, with a handkerchief tied over his nose and mouth, he paused in this work to pull apart the pages of an old journal. _… from a visit to her girlhood home_, Jess read._ I imagine she will return some time in the autumn, or perhaps the following spring. I wish her safe passage and hope …_

It was barely legible, and to Jess it seemed valueless, but he wasn't empowered to actually dispose of anything. Dutifully he recorded the presence of the water-damaged journal, just as he recorded the presence of medical supplies circa WWII, from when The Copenhagen had been a veteran's hospital, and school supplies, including desks with inkwells, from when the house had been an academy for girls. On his clipboard he made note of stacks of dusty tracts bound with rubber bands—for a time The Copenhagen had been occupied by a wealthy sect of religious fundamentalists. He found rolled up Oriental carpets, glassware, and ugly statues. Trunks he hadn't yet been able to open. Thirteen boxes of linen tablecloths, all moldy. _Some object, provenance unknown to me, could be humongous flyswatter._ He wrote it all down.

Some days he'd be a lumberjack, clearing windfall with a chainsaw. He liked the chainsaw, it appealed to his sense of danger. On his first attempt ever at the crank cord, he flooded the engine and had to put the saw down on a tree stump and walk away. He returned, circling cautiously, slapping his safety gloves against the palm of his hand. Flooding a chainsaw was so common there was an eight-step protocol for addressing it; he went through the checklist and after that he got a pop on the first pull. The resulting roar split the air and Jess was delighted. He yelled, "Give me some _sugar_, baby!"

Andy, who'd been watching on the sidelines, laughed out loud. "Hail to the king," Andy returned, satisfied Jess wasn't going to slice off his own foot.

Busy behind the scenes, Jess didn't have much to do with the guests. They came, enjoyed their Disneyland illusion, and left. He wasn't exactly friends with his co-workers—he wasn't exactly friends with anybody—but they were good enough guys, willing to show him the ropes. They seemed to be giving him the benefit of the doubt, mistaking his natural tendency towards sullenness for taciturnity. Jess knew it was only a matter of time until they realized that he really was an asshole, and started to actively dislike him. It was always that way.

But he wasn't planning to stick around forever. He just needed to make it work long enough to get some cash in his bank account. And it would be good to see a dentist. He hadn't done that in a while.

>

Only some of the staff was in residence, the others worked their shifts and went home. At first Jess wasn't sure why he'd gotten the live-in deal, and he wasn't sure he liked it; there was a distinct lack of personal space, and it was kind of like being paid in company script. Then one stormy night, up in the airless attic room he shared with four other guys, he was jarred into wakefulness by the specter of Andy Moizer looming over his bed.

"Jeez," he said thickly. His heart was hammering. "Give a guy some warning."

"Get up, get your shit together." Andy's voice was low. "Meet me downstairs."

In the next bed, Will Lozo muttered something and rolled over, snoring. Down the row, Benji Zhu groaned, "Shut the fuck up, you bastards."

Andy backed out quietly. Jess reached for the cheap travel alarm he kept on the floor. 3:20 am. Less than two hours 'til his shift started. He snagged his jeans off the foot of his bed and pulled them up over his shorts.

Shirt in one hand, shoes in the other, he padded barefoot down the hall. The floor was damp under his feet, and in some places it was rotten. There was a danger of splinters. In any building, warm air rose to the top, and the attic wasn't properly vented. Jess didn't know if putting his fist through a wall would help, but it was an option he'd considered, on more than one occasion.

He was heading for the communal bathroom. The staff was supposed to police their own quarters, but nobody checked, so of course they didn't. They cleaned for a _living_. Like they were going to clean anything they didn't have to. The bathroom reeked in the way that only a john shared by several guys can stink. The toilet in the last stall ran incessantly if you didn't jiggle the handle just right. Jess _always_ used that toilet, and he _always_ let it run. The Copenhagen's water bill wasn't his problem.

He splashed some water on his face, blinking at a fuzzy image of himself in the mirror. His eyes weren't ready to focus. _Shit, shave, and shower?_ he wondered. _Nah. Better pick up the pace._ He finished dressing, and scurried down the back stairs to meet up with Andy.

"The next time you hear a storm like that," Andy told him, "it means you have to get out of bed."

"Okay," Jess said, even though he had pulled a long shift the day before and every muscle ached. He could have slept through a hurricane. Jess debated pointing that out to Andy, but ultimately couldn't be bothered. He yawned into a closed fist.

Andy explained that they were going to have to make a wide patrol to ensure that none of the aboveground power lines were in danger of being pulled down by falling branches. And they were going to have to inspect the building for leaks, because sometimes the rain gutters got clogged or blown off. If there was a problem with drainage, they could have a flood. "There's rain gear," he told Jess. "Boots and stuff."

"Thanks." Jess had been wondering, but was too sleepy to ask.

"How's your hand?"

A couple of days ago, Jess had sustained an injury. It was no big deal. The most remarkable thing about it was the judicious debate that followed, in which Jess had participated solely because during it he got to sit in Andy's office with his feet up, stuffing his mouth with Peek Freans.

Andy had been dithering over whether or not he was required to reset the dry erase board. Holding his injured hand aloft to staunch the blood flow, Jess argued against that, although since it hadn't looked like he was getting fired either way, his argument hadn't been all that impassioned. At the moment he had been much more passionate about Andy's stash of imported cookies. He liked the round ones with the sticky red goo in the middle.

Jess had been working on the definitive inventory when he got hurt. _One red and black trunk_, he'd written. _Chained and padlocked. There's a million miles of wire wrapped over the chain. What the hell is in this thing? Does anybody know? Oh wait, that's my job._ He tried to cut the wire with wire cutters, and sliced open his hand.

Andy shooed him away from the cookies, and sent him for a tetanus shot. His benefits hadn't kicked in, and it burned Jess's ass that he had to pay for it himself, despite the fact that it was a work-related injury.

Andy decided finally that it was not enough of an injury to warrant resetting the tally, and Jess climbed aboard his trusty forklift, and put the trunk away. _I will get to this_, he wrote, under his previous notation. _But the damn thing bit me, so we're taking a break from each other for a while._

Now Jess held up his hand. "Five fingers."

"Keep it that way," Andy said.

"I aim to."

"I hope we have boots that will fit you. Your feet are really small."

"Thanks again," Jess said sourly. He was sensitive about the size of his feet.

>

There was a ghost. The staff called him Anton, and treated him like a friendly mascot. They spoke to him. They wished him good morning, and asked after absent socks or other small objects. At first Jess was annoyed, suspecting a practical joke. But lights did have a tendency to flicker and go out, and sometimes there were footsteps when no one was there. Occasionally there would be a bad smell. It was the smell of putrescence. Jess was familiar with the smell, having once cleaned the maggoty remains of a squirrel out of a lady's rain gutter. The moment Jess became convinced something had crawled under the floor or into the wall and died there, and began to formulate a plan to track it down, the smell would dissipate, as quickly as it had come.

Like the others, he began to be able to sense when Anton was present. Anton didn't materialize, and there was no aura of malevolence that accompanied his visits. It was simply a sense that he was _there_. He didn't cause any harm. But he was dead. And dead cold. Jess would find himself looking over his shoulder with a shiver, as if an icy finger had brushed his neck. "Anton?" he'd say. At first he felt foolish, but it happened over and over. He began to believe.

One day Jess was working alone in the lazy morning sun of the blue room, setting up chairs and tables for a party that was coming in at eleven. It was a weekday brunch, a low-key type of deal, and while they were busy in the kitchens, the rest of the staff was having a quiet day. To Jess the house seemed half-asleep. He was wearing the tidy, short-sleeved polo he wore when he worked inside and might actually been seen by a guest, and still he was sweating. He could hear a fly buzzing.

Will Lozo, who was a hypochondriac, interrupted him. Will had discovered a bump on the back of his neck and was convinced it was cancer; he pulled Jess into the bathroom, and made him take a look. Jess was as curious about malignant spots as the next guy, so he was disappointed to have to inform Will that what he had on the back of his neck was a puss-filled zit. When Jess returned to the blue room, things were not as he'd left them.

He made a shaky appeal to the ceiling. "_Dude_. What is up with the chair pyramid?"

He looked at his watch and swore. "Look," he said finally, trying to sound reasonable. "I worked really hard setting out all these chairs. I don't have time to do it again. I'm going for a smoke. I hope you can help me out here."

By the time he returned, everything was back the way it was supposed to be.

>

He'd been sent up to shave and now he was late, having gotten hypnotized while peering out the attic window. He hadn't been able to help himself. That was one long line of upscale cars sweeping up the drive. He'd put so much time in on the definitive inventory he had begun to think in that manner, and without realizing he was doing it he alphabetized some of the cars: _Aston Martin, Bentley, Hummer, Mercedes_ … He leaned forward, squinting. Huh. _One ridiculously ostentatious sports car, could be a Spyker_. Jess wouldn't have been surprised to see a couple of elephants. These people brought to mind Hannibal and his army marching across the Pyrenees.

Confident that he was invisible in the dark, he jumped when the naked bulb burst into life above him. "Knock it off, Anton."

"Not Anton." Jess turned to find Benji Zhu in the doorway, a hand on the light switch.

"Hey."

"Hey."

Jess raised an eyebrow, and Benji turned off the light. For a moment, both boys were quiet in the dark. Benji cleared his throat. "So. What are we doing?"

"Nothing."

"You spying?"

"Yeah." Jess gestured at the long line of cars. "Fuck."

"I _know_." Benji laughed in an evil way. "And _you're_ supposed to help with their bags. I thought I heard Andy tell you that."

"I'm covering for Will. He's sick. For real."

"Wow." Benji seemed impressed. "This must be the happiest day of his life."

"I'd wish him well, but I don't think he'd thank me."

"Wish him a nice case of Salmonella."

"I was thinking genital warts."

Benji snickered. "Every day, the guy's like, 'I'm sick, I'm sick.' And he never is. Then one day, he finally is. It must be, I don't know-"

"Incredibly fulfilling," Jess suggested.

"Yeah! Finally, he's right. To him, it would feel like proving the theory of relativity." Benji leaned against the doorframe, folding his arms across his chest. "I notice that you don't seem to be in a hurry."

Jess looked down at his feet. "Doesn't appear that way."

"It won't be so bad," Benji assured him. "You've successfully evaded most of them."

"I wasn't _hiding_."

Benji gave an expressive shrug. A shrug that said, _Have it your way_. "Whatever. But most of them are checked in already."

>

Despite many memos exhorting the staff not to do it, Jess took the back stairs two at a time. He was almost at the bottom when he realized someone else was there. It was a guest, somebody who had found her way behind the scenes. It happened. Guests were like sheep and had a tendency to wander; it was part of everybody's job description to herd them back to their designated areas.

He knew it was a guest—he could hear her high heels striking the stairs. The female staff wore flats because the manager was a woman, and she said anything else would be inhumane. Whoever it was, she was on the stairs above him, her footfall slow and uncertain. She came to a stop, and he stopped too, tilting his head up to listen.

He debated turning off the light, for no other reason than to be a prick, but thought better of it immediately. It was one thing to turn the lights off on a woman, and maybe throw a scare into her, but it was another thing to strand her someplace unfamiliar, where she could break a leg. _Or worse,_ he thought, remembering Anton.

It occurred to him that old Anton might have cozied up to her, given her a fright. Popular wisdom was that Anton liked to harass pretty girls, but since the damn ghost was all up in his face every time he turned around, Jess didn't buy that for a second.

She had been silent for a long time. She could just as easily be freaking herself out. Against his better judgment, he decided to call out to her. Ask if she needed help. He was opening his mouth to form the words, when she started moving on her own.

"Attagirl," he whispered, relieved. He hadn't wanted to have to speak to her. He left her, and ran the rest of the way down.

>

The next morning found him hanging around the kitchens, hoping for a bagel or an irregular scone. He'd already eaten, but he'd been up for hours, working his ass off. There'd been chaos in the yellow room—it had already been set up, but he'd had to do one of the fastest takedowns in history, replacing a bunch of big tables with several smaller ones that could accommodate more people. For a gathering of this size, nobody expected all the guests to show up for breakfast at the same time, but there was an optimal number of seats required to ensure an easy flow of traffic, and one of the resident Mensa scholars had miscalculated.

There was still a shit-load to do getting ready for the dance. As Andy had promised when he'd been hired, he had gotten to bring up the stage and assemble it, woo-fucking-hoo. He was _so_ tired, and he was pretty sure there was an economy sized bruise on his butt from the night before, when an experiment in plastic surgery gone horribly wrong had pinched him so hard his eyes had watered. It had taken a concerted act of will on his part not to deck the old bag then and there. After that, he hadn't been able to sleep, anxious she was going to turn it all around and put it on him, like say he'd sexually harassed her or something.

_I can't afford to lose this job_, he thought, feeling desperate.

Standing there with a mondo huge headache pulsing behind his eye, it took him a long time to clue into a fact that was apparent to everybody else assembled: Something Was Happening. An incident. A girl had come into the kitchen, a girl who didn't belong there. She had dark hair falling in soft curls to her shoulders, and an odd posture, hunched and tentative, as if she were afraid of a harsh word or raised fist. He couldn't hear her voice, or see her face, but he took an involuntary step forward, leaning around the counter. What he saw was a slender ankle, so finely wrought, that it made his breath catch in his throat. He squeezed his hands into fists.

Poetry was for jerks and losers, but he could have written a sonnet about that ankle. When she had been his, he had gotten to touch and see so little of her. A hand on the small of her back under her sweater, a finger grazing her belly when she lay back on the couch to pull him down for a kiss. Most of the time she had worn jeans, or her school uniform with little girl tights. The evenings she dressed for dinner with her grandparents, the sight of her feet in heels, those pale ankles, had moved him in a way he couldn't explain.

She turned to go and he braced himself. Would she talk this time? Say anything other than no? But her eyes passed over him without a flicker of recognition. On her way out the door, she bumped into him. He reached out to steady her, but she shrugged him off. Without meeting his eyes, she said something like, "Oh, God! I'm sorry, I-"

"Rory," he breathed.

But she was already gone.

>

Losing somebody, somebody you should have taken better care of, somebody you weren't supposed to lose, is a trauma akin to amputation—afterward, you're always reaching for something that isn't there. He would wake of a morning and know a brief respite, then remember and feel hollow, the pain like two hands applying pressure to his heart.

He was tormented by flashbacks, and caught glimpses of her in other girls—a quizzical tilt of a head, a laugh. A delicate hand clutching a coffee mug. Sometimes, he had imaginary conversations with her. He missed the sound of her voice. He made up scenarios: taking her to fancy restaurants, rescuing her from kidnappers. He imagined making her laugh, making her face light up with joy. In the dark of night with a hand sliding into his shorts, he would imagine her some more. She spun naked on the air in front of him like a sylph. At those times he had her all to himself, and she was very accommodating.

_Her hair is different_, he thought. _Whose idea was that?_

He tried to keep up with her through his uncle, but Luke was nobody's fool. In phone calls, Jess's habitual question was "How's…?" Then he would let his voice trail off, unwilling to say her name. Luke would answer that she was _fine_. He didn't elaborate. Jess knew that Luke thought he had an unhealthy obsession, but he was wrong. It wasn't an obsession. It just wasn't over.

Breakfast was on, and if he knew her like he thought he did, there was no way she was going to pass up a meal. There was something funky about her metabolism; it was like it ran twice as fast as a normal person's and consequently she packed away a lot of food. He slipped into the yellow room in time to catch her in the act of smiling up at some smarmy preppy, her tiny hand swallowed in his gargantuan paw. Jess's stomach folded in on itself.

Some of the guests were milling and chatting, sipping coffee or breakfast cocktails (there was a vodka, cranberry and orange juice thing that always went over well). Others were taking their seats. He stood at the back, near the kitchen doors, partially hidden by the half wall that was intended to conceal from guests the details of last minute food prep; in this instance, it was servers taking plates from the warming carts and organizing them onto trays. Two of the waitresses were giggling conspiratorially.

"The girl in blue?" one of them asked, and Jess dragged his eyes away from Rory and the fat bastard who might as well have been drooling, the way he was ogling her. Rory was wearing blue. A dress with short sleeves that buttoned down the front. It had a pattern of some sort. It looked slippery.

"What's up?" he asked.

One of the girls hoisted a tray. "Shh, don't say anything."

"Okay," he said.

"Dana sneezed all over that one," she gestured with her chin. "We're giving it to Miss Skinny in position twenty-three. She thinks her shit don't stink."

"What about the 'Princess and the Pea Theorem'?" he asked. This was a pet theory of the manager's; she harped on it incessantly. Everything had to be perfect, because guests had a preternatural sensitivity to flaws.

"I used to work at Quassy Park," the waitress said philosophically. "I made cotton candy." She shifted her position, so the tray was partially supported by her shoulder. "I hated it _so_ much. If there's anything that sucks, it's making cotton candy. The sugar is like these itty-bitty rock pellets. It flies out of the thing and hits you in the face. And then we put the cotton candy in these clear plastic bags … we were making extra, you know? Some of the guys would fart in the bags and stuff, and I used to think that was _so_ gross. But sometimes, somebody just deserves it, don't they?"

"Your shoe's untied," Jess said.

"What? Oh, shit!" She couldn't look down, and seemed at a loss. Jess took the tray from her, turning away to rest it on the counter. "Thanks. Oh … it's not untied."

"Sorry." He gave her back the tray. "My mistake."

"Did you turn it around? Which one's the spit plate?"

"Wait, I'll put an extra garnish on it." He hooked a thin orange wedge out of the container, and folded it into a curl to match the one that was already on the plate.

"Oh, thanks," she said gratefully. She didn't seem troubled by the fact that Jess had participated in food handling without washing his hands, but then again, he didn't suppose someone who was prepared to serve up a plate of loogie would be.

"Just make sure position twenty-three gets that plate," he said. The unctuous preppy slid into the seat beside Rory, making Jess scowl. He pointed at another plate. "And give _that_ one to the guy beside her."

>

He neglected his work to watch her through the meal, and took grim satisfaction from her seatmate's consumption of omelette aux fines herbs et phlegm. Rory ate like a horse and drank four cups of coffee. She fidgeted. She hooked her heels over the chair rungs until her grandmother leaned over and whispered in her ear. After that, she sat up straight. For a while. She started to droop, and ultimately put her elbow on the table. Her grandmother leaned over again, and so it went.

_She's here with her grandparents_, he realized, and a question he hadn't thought to ask was answered. _Of course_. He didn't see Lorelai, for which he was grateful, but which also struck him as odd. Lorelai and Rory were co-dependant; in Jess's opinion their relationship was unnatural. He thought Lorelai was needy and pathetic, and instead of properly parenting her child, she had warped the mother-daughter dynamic to such an extent that it was borderline abusive. He had read a book on the subject, during his recovery movement phase. _The Co-Dependent Parent: Free Yourself by Freeing Your Child_. At the time, he'd thought it might help him to understand Rory better.

He was going to have to make sure Rory's grandparents didn't see him. They would cover Rory's eyes and ears, sweep her out of there. If they stayed the night, they'd set up a perimeter, get a rottweiler, string tin cans around Rory's bedroom door.

_Rory and I are going to be sleeping under the same roof_, he thought, and felt dizzy. _I could find her room … try to talk to her … _It dawned on him that if Rory's grandparents even got a whiff of him, they wouldn't close ranks around Rory. They would have him fired.

Suddenly he was angry and found himself considering a preemptive quit. There was no way in hell he was going to wait around for a couple of rich assholes to decide he was a danger to their precious porcelain granddaughter. But he liked Andy; he couldn't just leave him in the lurch. What could he do? Be so rude to the manager she'd have no choice but to fire him on the spot? Put a coke in the deep fryer? He'd done that once, a long time ago, to get fired from a KFC franchise on Lexington.

_Mr. Mariano_, he thought ruefully. _You are your own worst enemy._

Rory got up from the table, leaving her napkin on her chair. The big guy got up and followed her, and Jess gritted his teeth and followed them both. They went out to the garden. Jess kept to the trees and stayed out of sight. The guy gave Rory flower. _Fuck you, you pussy_, Jess thought. _And by the way, don't pick the flowers._

Rory tucked the flower behind her ear. She was _smiling_.

_I'm going to kill that fat son of a bitch_, Jess thought. Granny Gilmore appeared like a bat out of hell and descended on Rory.

It looked like Rory was getting an earful. Good.

>

He was not stalking her. This was not stalking, this was _watching_. He was watching her with yet another guy, and frankly, he was starting to get a little pissed off. _Technically_, he thought, _that girl is still my girlfriend. We never officially broke up_. He was satisfied with that conclusion. It was like a relationship loophole. _You have to end it to end it; someone actually has to say, 'I'm breaking up with you.' That never happened. I was just absent. It's more like a sabbatical._

He had to get back to work, or he was going to get fired. He cast a last, lingering look over his shoulder and stalked off, leaving Rory to chitchat with her temporary boy-candy.

>

Okay, maybe he was stalking her. Just a little. But it was impossible to concentrate—the fact of her presence was like a constant dog whistle discernable only to him. More difficult was his awareness that she was spending her time in the company of creeps he recognized on sight as rich pricks who may have known what to wear when and which fork was for what, but who were also dripping with entitlement and thought the world existed to serve itself up to them on a platter. They took and took with both hands and put some more in their pockets for later. It didn't matter how sophisticated Rory thoughtshe was—guys like that ate girls like Rory for breakfast. Jess just needed to make sure she was okay. He dropped what he was doing to look for her, and found her by herself in the lee of the Little Mermaid statue.

She seemed sad. Or tired. He checked his watch. Maybe she was just hungry. When they had been dating, he used to kid her that she should carry protein pills, like the German soldier in _Lifeboat_. Working at his uncle's diner, he had often been charged with feeding her, and although he wouldn't have been able to articulate it then, he realized now that he had enjoyed the feeling that he was nurturing her.

The night they watched _Lifeboat_—Jess remembered it like it was yesterday. He had been trying to get Rory to read _Cannery Row, _a book that was important to him. And no, it wasn't because Steinbeck romanticized the lumpenproletariat. Okay, maybe it _was_. Or maybe it was because he saw the novella as a way for a guy with no goals or plans to try to communicate to his very driven girlfriend what he foresaw as his future on the margins of society. But that didn't _matter_, he wanted her to read it, and he felt that his girl should just fucking read a book if he told her to do it. Rory, who'd had bad experiences at school with _Of Mice and Men_ and _The Pearl,_ was resisting, and in any event fairly committed to her whiney Russian writers. He decided to ease her back into Steinbeck with some film adaptations.

At the video store he asked Kirk for _East of Eden_, which he thought Rory would enjoy because of James Dean. But that had been rented, or stolen, so instead he got the stark black and white Hitchcock film. Rory refused to take it seriously. She spent the entire evening poking him in the ribs, and whispering, "Tallulah Bankhead's not wearing any underpants!" Then she'd giggle like a maniac, and of course he had to kiss her—because the only way to shut up a giggling girl is with a kiss. Rory never did get around to reading _Cannery Row, _as far as he knew.

He stepped on a branch and it broke with a crack. Rory spun and looked right where he was hiding in the brush. He hadn't meant to scare her, but he had wanted to get her alone. He needed to sit on her, keep her in one place. Make her listen until she understood.

Rory backed away. She turned sharply and began to run, wobbling on her heels. More than anything she resembled a heron, an effect that was intensified when she raised her skinny arms and held them out like wings.

_She runs like a girl_, he thought affectionately. It was a thought he'd had before.

>

Dinner was a formal affair, under the stars. Jess was done for the day, and should have been elsewhere, but he drifted closer and closer and ended up prowling the party like a great cat patrolling his territory. He saw Rory take a seat at one of the tables. The guy who was dogging her tried to pull out her chair but Rory beat him to it, seating herself and making Jess smile.

She was wearing green, an insubstantial dress comprised entirely of wishes and shadows. Jealously, Jess decided the dress was a little skimpy. He couldn't even _look _at her feet it was too painful—she had on high-heeled sandals that made it seem as if she were standing on tiptoe. He knew now why he had always felt tender about her feet. In the past when she had worn heels, it was as if she had been a young girl playing dress up, and he was being treated to a glimpse of the hidden woman in her, the person she was going to be. That woman was intimidating in her beauty, so mysterious—but standing next to her as her boyfriend he had at least been on the inside of the secret. Now she was distant. Unavailable to him, yet entertaining all comers. He was most emphatically on the outside.

Her hair was pinned up in a complicated way. She looked _expensive_. He felt like he was getting an ulcer.

He begged a dress shirt and trousers off Benji, who was more or less his size. Benji was concerned by the request, but gave in out of curiosity. Jess returned to the party in a getup resembling that of the wait staff, snagged a pitcher of water, and made his way to Rory's table. It was stupid and reckless, but he was consumed by a need to be near her.

He stood behind her, staring at her back. Beads of moisture had collected on the pitcher. It was dripping. He imagined one drop of water landing on her dress, how the fabric would darken.

Rory leaned forward to speak to the old man across the table. "And so you rescued him," she said, and Jess wanted to put his hands on her shoulders with a familiarity that says to all in observance, _This is mine_.

Her shoulders were bare and fine. Unblemished.

_His_ hands were cracked and calloused, the knuckles bruised. There was a blood blister under his thumbnail. Jess refilled her water glass. In some confusion, he withdrew.

>

There was a minor commotion on the dance floor—a couple danced into a table and knocked off one of the flower arrangements. Roses scattered and one of the staff swooped in and caught the big crystal bowl before it fell to the floor and smashed. The couple danced off, laughing hysterically, and Jess eyed them with contempt. It was unrealistic to expect guests to clean up after themselves, but they could have at least _offered_. After that, the person he eyed with contempt was Rory, who was turning in slow circles on the dance floor in the arms of one of the jerks who'd squired her around the gardens all day.

_Jezebel …_ His anger rose like bile in his throat, and a lyric floated to the top of his brain: _Jezebel ... From Israel, who never read a book, charmed the literati, and a smile was all it took._ He had no idea why he'd thought of it, couldn't remember what song it was from. All he knew was that Rory looked pretty cozy out there on the dance floor. She was really letting that guy paw her. He was practically humping her leg. The two of them turned, and Jess saw Rory's face. She looked right at him.

And did nothing.

It was too much. At first it had been a game or a challenge to get near to her, but she was _refusing_ to see him. It could only be deliberate. His annoyance—heretofore a non-specific swelling sensation—transmuted into furor. So she thought he was beneath her notice, part of the background? _You bitch_, he thought. _I hate you_.

He wanted to wave the music to a stop. He wanted to scream, I've been on top of her! I've been _inside_ her! Although the latter was not true. That had only happened in his fantasies. He found himself making a wish. He wished that Rory Gilmore would drop dead at his feet, and he wouldn't do a thing to help her.

And somewhere on the property an insubstantial presence paused in what it was doing, and turned its attention to Jess Mariano.

>

He climbed up to the attic and for a long while lay on his cot, complaining aloud and swearing and sweating until belatedly he remembered his borrowed clothes and arose to change. Once he was up, didn't know what to do with himself. He headed back downstairs, and turned in useless circles like a crippled mechanical monkey while his coworkers swooped past on important errands. He was hot, and felt feverish. He decided that he needed a drink. He opened the door to a utility room, turned on the lights, and ran the water at the big sink until it was good and cold. He drank out of his cupped hands, and splashed water in his face.

Eyes closed, bent over the sink, he reached for a rag, and it skittered away from his fingers. He reached again, muttering, "Not now, Anton. Please." Blindly, he located the rag and rubbed his face dry. He was surprised by the sound of something spattering the window. It sounded like … hail? He moved closer to the wall, leaning around the sink. It wasn't _raining_. Maybe it was freaking cotton candy. He pressed his nose to the glass. It happened again and he jumped. Rock pellets! "Jeez, Anton!"

Shaken, he stared out the window at the sliver of moon hanging low in the sky. His heart rate eased down, and then for all he knew his heart might have gone ahead and quit on him, because he began to feel vacant and sluggish. Scared. He had been thinking some dark shit. What kind of a shit-wad hid in the bushes and tried to convince himself a girl he hadn't been with in over a year was still his girlfriend on a technicality? For the first time, he felt like maybe he had an insight into those guys, those head cases that lost it and went after their exes. Yeah, it was an epiphany, but who needed an epiphany like that? It was evil.

"I would never hurt her," he whispered. "_Never_." Feeling sick, he knew that if he was looking for reassurance, he wasn't going to find it here. Maybe he wasn't out buying a shotgun from the back of some paramilitary freak's station wagon, but he had been following her. He had been toying with her. He had wanted to _humiliate _her. _You waited and hoped for her_, he thought. _And when she finally appeared, she wasn't missing you the way you were missing her, and you wanted her to … you wanted … you wished …_

Now that wish was out there, floating around in the universe. Did wishes have any weight? Could he get it back? He pressed his forehead to the window. God—it just hurt so much! She was his forever girl, and she couldn't even see him. His life was shit on toast.

Another shower of pebbles hit the window, and his head shot up. "Knock it off, Anton!" he snapped. "Don't you make me come out there!"

>

It took her a while to locate the car. She hadn't been in it when it was parked, and all the cars looked the same in the dark. While Rory would be willing to concede if pressed that cars could be different from one another, she didn't know cars, or care about cars. She had been in her grandfather's car many times, yet if the car had been used during the commission of a crime, were Rory called upon by the police to describe the vehicle, she would be able to parrot a make and a color, and after that she'd be reduced to hemming and hawing and twiddling her thumbs. As she searched, she made a mental note to take notice of the car's distinguishing features, but forgot it immediately.

She had to rely on reading license plates. Even after she had located the car, she wasn't a hundred percent sure it was the correct car until she bent to peer in the window and saw her novel in the back seat. The sight of the book warmed her heart, and took away some of the sting of Thom Doty pressing his stiffy against her belly without her permission. She retrieved itwith a thrill of anticipation, looking forward to stretching out on her bed and sinking into the pages.

With_ Middlesex_ tucked under her arm, Rory shut the car door firmly. It wasn't until she tried to step away that she realized her skirt was caught. "Oh, man!" she exclaimed, reaching for the door handle. Her grandfather was fussy about cars, and kept his scrupulously maintained, but cars were cars, and there was some aspect to their functioning that required _grease_. If she got grease on her pretty new dress-

"What the-?" She rattled the door handle. It was locked. Okay—she had _not_ locked the door. Locking the door required the car keys, and she had the keys in her hand. She was wearing the key ring around the middle finger of her right hand and-

_Middlesex_ slid out from under her arm. The keys were on the seat. Inside the car. The keys were _inside_ the car, on the _seat_. "Oh, no," she groaned.

There was a faint snikt-snikt-snikt, and with astonishment Rory realized the locks on the other three doors had softly engaged, one after the other. All by themselves. "Whoa, whoa, _stop_," she whispered shakily, and then there was the most terrible smell. She was cold, she was shivering, and all she could think was—what if the car decided to pull a full on Christine and drive away, dragging her along with it?

She began to tug on her dress, desperate to get it out of the door. She was trying very hard not to be frightened, but there was no question she was on the clock, she was having a very strong Perils of Pauline feeling, like she was tied to the tracks and the train whistle was blowing. She stepped back for leverage, and her sharp heel punched a hole in the grass at the edge of the pavement. There was a rip, and she was free, she was falling.

She landed with a thud. The fall had spun her head, and Rory lay on her back, blinking and feeling foolish but incredibly relieved. At least she wasn't going to be an unwilling participant in an interpretive but extremely authentic reenactment of the last moments of Isadora Duncan. _D. Boon died in a car crash_, she thought morbidly. _Hey … so did Albert Camus._ She raised a hand to scratch her cheek, and as she did so, her wrist brushed a bare breast.

Rory rolled over on knees. She scuttled into the bushes, where she crouched, her high heels once again sinking into the soft earth. "Well, _this_ sucks," she commented to no one, staring at the parking lot where the sad remnants of her party dress remained, half caught in the car door and spilling into a shimmering pool on the ground. She covered herself with her arms.

>

She tried to imagine herself in the future, mature and accomplished, this embarrassment long in the past. She was telling this story as funny anecdote on a talk show. To her horror, Charlie Rose morphed into Jay Leno. Rory began to perspire under the hot studio lights, and the audience was hooting and clapping. A college boy cupped his hands around his mouth to yell, "Yeah, baby," in an Austin Powers voice. Her imagination had added the college boy because that was just the way of it—there was always a college boy on hand to bear witness the moment a woman's skirt blew up around her ears, or she bent over too low and flashed her boobs by mistake. Who better to remind her of her place in the world, that she was nothing more than an abstract, a collection of private parts?

_I really hope Thom Doty doesn't see me like this,_ Rory thought miserably, huddled in the bushes in her underpants and heels. _Or Charlie. Or Grandma, oh, God. Or Grandpa! _She bent her head, face flaming._ Or Mr. Margrave._ She shuddered, hugging her knees_. Or the people who work at The Copenhagen. After the stunt I pulled, they must all hate me_.

She hadn't meant to make them hate her! She had only been trying to look out for her mother. Rory managed a wry smile. She was not incapable of seeing the humor in the situation. She tried to do her mom a good turn, but had inadvertently bought her mother some bad karma by interfering with Lorelai's professional life. Her mother however, had paid her back in advance, by offering to alter her dress and not making the new seams strong enough.

"We really shouldn't have dozed through _The Hudsucker Proxy_," Rory muttered. "Joel and Ethan, I am most heartily sorry."

That was when Rory heard laughter, and voices. She started, ducking lower, and put a hand on the ground for balance. This was it! Her chance to be rescued. The voices approached, drew alongside, and passed by. Rory stayed where she was, silent and hidden. After a while she heard a car door slam, and the voices headed away. _What are you doing!_ The wail reverberated between her ears. She worked her mouth, but no actual sound would come out. Wanting to cry, she thought, _That was your big chance, and you WASTED it!_

She was too ashamed to be discovered nearly naked in the bushes. She couldn't face the stares, the inevitable questions. But what was the alternative? Was she going to wait through the night, as the air grew wet and cold and dew collected around her feet? And when the sun came out, and the house began to stir—what then?

Slowly, Rory began to crawl. She stayed low. Little stones pressed into her palms and knees. She was trying to get close enough to the mansion to make a run for it. _I'm skinny_, she thought. _I'll slip in and hide behind stuff and work my way upstairs. Maybe I can grab a tablecloth, or an afghan or something._ It didn't impress her as a particularly spectacular idea, but at least it was a plan.

She worked her way along and eventually came to what seemed like the end of the row of bushes. She got up on her knees, shoving the branches out of the way so she could see. She was quite close to the side of the building. A path was worn into the grass, leading up to what appeared to be a service entrance. There was a window. A light went on, and a boy appeared in the window. One boy, or a cubist rendering of a boy, as he appeared in the uneven light of the mullioned window. He was by himself. She could … She could stay where she was, and he could bring her something to wear! Nobody would have to see her. She could talk to one boy couldn't she, even if she was naked?

"Oh, please," she whispered. "Don't you want to come outside?"

She heard a noise, like a bug or a bunch of bugs had flown into the glass, and that inspired her. She began to scrabble around for the tiny stones that had pricked her during her crawl. She made a small pile and scooped it into her hand. The boy disappeared from view and Rory's heart sank, but then he came back and pressed his nose to the glass. Feeling that she had to hurry, Rory tossed her stones wildly. Rory saw the boy jump. "Come on, sailor," she coaxed. "Check out the naked lady."

The window framed the boy. He seemed content to stay there. Perhaps he was pondering the mysteries of the universe, or had eaten too much dinner, and now he had gas. Rory scraped up some more stones. She was certain that the next time she looked for him, he'd be gone. But when she looked up, he was still there. La-di-dah, there he was, staring at nothing, not a care in the world. She stood up this time, to get better aim.

>

If it had occurred to Rory to do the research—and why would it?—she would have discovered that the Polish community in Connecticut comprises nearly 10 percent of the state's population. Many of them, like Anton Pawłowski, are descendants of the Polonia that settled in America in the late 19th century. Anton's father had been part of that first wave of immigration, a contracted farmhand working with an eye to one day owning his own land.

Anton grew up on that farm, but after his family perished in the great flu epidemic, he spent the remainder of his days in service, working for his room and board. Anton Pawłowski was not haunting The Copenhagen. He had certainly been _surprised_ by his death, but he hadn't felt the need to linger. He was far away, where he was supposed to be.

It was Mrs. Carver who was earthbound. Mrs. Carver had never left The Copenhagen. And she was finding her afterlife to be as infuriating as her material life, in that she was unable to communicate effectively with anybody. But she did try—often with curious results.

>

Jess didn't know what the hell he thought he was going to do—yell at the air? How did you get a ghost to piss off? Exorcise the fucker? Were Catholic priests on call for that kind of thing, or was that only Keanu Reeve's bag? He stepped out the side door, and heard a rustle in the bushes.

"Who's there?" he called in a low voice.

And there she was.

She was tottering on her high heels in the flowerbed, her arms crossed in front of her. A bush was sort of concealing her midsection, but there was definitely something wrong with the picture. His mind wouldn't quite allow him to process what he was seeing. He stared at her stupidly.

She seemed shocked too. Her mouth was wide open.

Under the blue-violet sky she was so pale that for a moment he was terrified that she was dead, and he was looking at her ghost. He inhaled, checking for the telltale scent, but all he smelled was flowers. Not her perfume, but he would forever remember it as such. She spoke to him.

"Jess?" she said. "Is that you?"

>

**The End**


End file.
